er tunes as well, and set him to
work with the score before him. It was while miserably performing his
part in company with six placid Germans that Pere Michaux first saw poor
Pierre, and recognizing a compatriot, spoke to him. Struck by the
pathetic misery of his face, he asked a few questions of the little
flute-player, listened to his story, and gave him the comfort and help
of sympathy and shillings, together with the sound of the old home
accents, sweetest of all to the dulled ears. When the time of enlistment
expired, Pierre came westward after his priest: Pere Michaux had written
to him once or twice, and the ex-cook had preserved the letters as a
guide-book. He showed the heading and the postmark whenever he was at a
loss, and travelled blindly on, handed from one railway conductor to
another like a piece of animated luggage, until at last he was put on
board of a steamer, and, with some difficulty, carried westward; for the
sight of the water had convinced him that he was to be taken on some
unknown and terrible voyage.

The good priest was surprised and touched to see the tears of the little
man, stained, weazened, and worn with travel and grief; he took him over
to the hermitage in his sharp-pointed boat, which skimmed the crests of
the waves, the two sails wing-and-wing, and Pierre sat in the bottom,
and held on with a death-grasp. As soon as his foot touched the shore,
he declared, with regained fluency, that he would never again enter a
boat, large or small, as long as he lived. He never did. In vain Pere
Michaux represented to him that he could earn more money in a city, in
vain he offered to send him Eastward and place him with kind persons
speaking his own tongue, who would procure a good situation for him;
Pierre was obstinate. He listened, assented to all, but when the time
came refused to go.

"Are you or are you not going to send us that cook of yours?" wrote
Father George at the end of two years. "This is the fifth time I have
made ready for him."

"He will not go," replied Pere Michaux at last; "it seems that I must
resign myself."

"If your Pere Michaux is handsomer than I am," said Dr. Gaston one day
to Anne, "it is because he has had something palatable to eat all this
time. In a long course of years saleratus tells."

Pere Michaux was indeed a man of noble bearing; his face, although
benign, wore an expression of authority, which came from the submissive
obedience of his flock, who loved